Threatened tree species has chance of survival

Parakmeria omeiensis, a rare tree species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, has been artificially propagated by researchers in Sichuan province.

Since 2016, more than 500 parakmeria omeiensis trees have been planted on the province's Mount Emei.

Growing somewhere 1,200 to 1,500 above sea level on the mountain, the trees are unique species in the world.

In 1940, Zheng Wanjun (1904-1983), a leading Chinese botanist, became the first to discover parakmeria omeiensi on the mountain.

In the ensuing three decades, however, nobody had spotted them and they were feared to be extinct.

In 1987, a four-member investigation team headed by Wu Jialin, president of Emei Traditional Chinese Medicine School in Sichuan, paid a visit to Mount Emei and found nine parakmeria omeiensi at a site about 1,200 meters above sea level.

Only seventy-four wild trees of the species have been found since, according to Yu Daoping, deputy researcher with the Sichuan Research Institute of Natural Resources.

Since the late 1980s, researchers in Sichuan have collected seeds from wild parakmeria omeiensis trees and used them to propagate 1,600 more artificially.